Rain was falling from early morning; Lemm wore a scowl, and kept more and more tightly compressing his lips, as though he had taken an oath never to open them again.

When he went to his room, Lavretsky took up to bed with him a whole bundle of French newspapers, which had been lying for more than fortnight on his table unopened.

He began indifferently to tear open the wrappings, and glanced hastily over the columns of the newspapers--in which, however, there was nothing new.

He was just about to throw them down--and all at once he leaped out of bed as if he had been stung.

In an article in one of the papers, M.Jules, with whom we are already familiar, communicated to his readers a "mournful intelligence, that charming, fascinating Moscow lady," he wrote, "one of the queens of fashion, who adorned Parisian salons, Madame de Lavretsky, had died almost suddenly, and this intelligence, unhappily only too well-founded, had only just reached him, M.Jules.He was," so he continued, "he might say a friend of the deceased." Lavretsky dressed, went out into the garden, and till morning he walked up and down the same path..